As a representative of those darn metric Europeans, I have to ask a question. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a foot equals 12 inches, right? So I suppose that means that 1/16th of a foot is 3/4 of an inch (which doesn't sound all that easy to me). But 1/128th of a foot? In decimal figures it comes out as 0.09375 inches. Which brings me to my next question. You mentioned mm (milimeters), and they are necessary for any sort of precision work. But what's the subdivision of an inch? And how many of them are there to an inch?
<br>Actually, that was 1/128th of an inch, not a foot. In a nutshell, feet and inches are a fraction-oriented, base-12 numbering system. That inch can be evenly divided in half by the markings on any ruler, or in quarters, eighths, sixteenths, thirty-seconds, etc., etc. Most inch rulers are marked out to sixteenths & in practical usage you can extrapolate smaller distances by constantly guessing half the distance between measurements to get smaller and smaller.<br> <br>Hypothetically speaking, let's say you were laser cutting a piece of 1 inch (1") metal stock into 2, 4, 8, or 16 smaller, even layers (as if it were a veneer, and using a laser so there wasn't a loss due to the kerf of a sawblade) with just the markings on any ruler. You could (but not that you would, really, in this example). Without going to decimal measurements, you can't split up a centimeter's worth of similar stock the same way. In half, in 5ths, or 10ths, sure. <br><br>Feet, by being composed of 12 inches are similarly divisible, with the addition of 3rds, 6ths, 12ths, etc. This recipe is better for more efficient at subdividing raw material into equally usable chunks. <br><br>If I recall correctly, Leo Frankowski, in his Cross-Time Engineer series, remade the Polish numbering system to be base12, because it was a more efficient way to do math than by 10s. Harder to understand, perhaps, but more efficient.<br><br>
Forgive me my ignorance, but why? Why is it harder to measure out 60cm than to measure out 2 feet (not accurate)? Or, for that matter 38,1cm rather than 1'3" (I think that's how you write it). Of course, when you build stuff using the metric system, you tend to use even measurements, so that rather than 38,1cm you'd probably use 40cm. But if you need something that needs to fit into something else, you just measure the length you need and make it that length. I don't see the difficulty. Except of course that you already have lots of stuff that made to even measurements as measured in feet/inches.
<br>It's all in how you look at it, and it might not be any different really in practical use. Given 1'3", that's 15 inches, or 1-1/4 feet. If I have a 5-foot board (12 inches x 5 feet or 60 inches=1.524 meters), I know I'll get exactly four 1'3"-sized pieces out of it. Could you spit a meter into four even parts easily? I can split a 3 foot, 4 foot, a 5 foot, or 6 foot etc. evenly and quickly into 4 parts. 9", 12", 15", or 18". The 3-foot one (a "yard") is closest to a meter, and has 36 inches in it.<br><br>
Seriously, the A4 standard
is brilliant, but you need to look at the complete ISO paper standard (A0, A1...A4...A
n)to see exactly how brilliant it is.
The brilliant thing about it is the ratio of the two sides. It is the ratio of 1 to the squareroot of 2, or 1,414. The reason this is brilliant is that it means that if you put two pieces of A4 paper together along the long side, you wind up with a piece of A3 paper, which, not only is exactly twice as large, but also has the exact same ratio of the two sides.
There are all sorts of benefits from this. I'll try to list a few of them.
Let's say you have made some sort of document, a chart, an invitation, whatever. Now you need a copy of it that is larger than A4, for instance if you want to hang it up somewhere for people to read, but think that A4 is a bit too small. No problem, you just print it in A3 format, which is easy to do, because everything is just scaled up 200%. This means that your margins, your fonts, your lines, your graphics, are all exactly as you designed them.
Or, from a writer's point of view. The standard paper size to work in (here) is A4. Let's say I've written a book in MS Word. I might have specific ideas about the visual layout of the book. Like, I don't want this paragraph broken up over two pages, or I want all the chapters to begin on uneven pages. When I print all or parts of it myself in A4 (which I probably have to, because that's the standard paper size for home printers) it looks like it does on screen. And here's the brilliant thing: when the publisher prints the book, it's in A5, which ensures that all my formatting is intact. The chapter that started on page 57
still starts on page 57.
Here's a few links related to this.
Explanation of the ISO paper standard:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html
A discussion of A4 vs. US Letter:
http://betweenborders.com/wordsmithing/a4-vs-us-letter/
- Wishbone
<br>Ok, I like the consistent enlargement percentage. That's a clear advantage to your side.<br><br>As I said, I deal with paper sizes every day because I'm an estimator for a printing company. As such, from a manufacturing standpoint, the English sizes shown in the table are flawed. They are not commonly produced sizes above 17x22 (4 8.5x11's). The most common paper stocks I deal with are 8.5x11 (letter), 8.5x14 (legal), 11x17 (tabloid, or 2 8.5x11s side-by-side), 17x22, 23x35, 25x38, & 26x40. Anything of 17x22 size or smaller is not actually manufactured at that size, but is instead cut out of one of the larger-sized sheets in the list.<br><br>It's nice that an A0 sheet could be cut into what looks like 16 A4s, but must not be very practical for the printing industry in Europe. We start with sheets that are deliberately larger than we'll need in the end to allow for bleed (when ink prints right past the trimmed edge of paper) at a standard size. That is, on our Italian-made press, which by the way would not fit the A0 sheet (33.11"x46.811"), we generally run 25x38 sheets. That allows to fit 8 8.5x11s with bleed all sides on the sheet, with room for a color calibration bar along the top edge and gripper at the bottom. ("Gripper" is the space on a sheet where the press will grip hold of it & pull it through the press, and thus can't be printed on.) We also can allow for extra paper to be left between the letter pieces for a later folding and trimming process, where multiple sheets are folded up to form signatures (such as books are printed of). That extra is then trimmed off the folded signature after its assembly, leaving nice, straight edges & bleed effects in someone's magazine or book.<br><br>This A0 size doesn't seem to allow for that extra space necessary for the manufacturing process, at least, efficiently. With any kind of bleed space, you won't get 16 out, and perhaps, a lot of wasted paper. I've not done the math to figure out how much.<br><br><br>In short, neither metric or english is perfect. As a silly American, I think in inches and feet, and favor that system of measurement. Perhaps someone who uses both can offer a different perspective.<br><br>Nate